On 10 June 2026, Anthropic released Fable 5, their most powerful model to date, replacing Mythos 5, which specialised in cybersecurity. Three days later, the Trump administration issued export controls, forcing Anthropic to stop providing both models to users worldwide. This marked the first time in history that the US had imposed export controls on widely deployed commercial AI software instead of on chips or hardware. The government cited a jailbreak that could potentially lead to misuse of the model and threaten national security as the reason for the controls. However, Anthropic insisted that the jailbreak was very specific and not universal, and that OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 already possessed these capabilities.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, negotiations between the Amazon CEO and US officials were the catalyst for this crackdown. The situation behind the scenes is far more complicated: Anthropic sued the Trump administration for blacklisting them by the Pentagon; just two days before the ban, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, wrote articles urging the government to regulate AI, citing Mythos as an example; and Kushner, a close associate of the administration, holds private equity in OpenAI, a direct competitor in the IPO race. On Hacker News, many are labelling this “extortion” rather than regulation, citing the same pattern seen in previous cases involving tariffs and political leverage.

However, the story of Fable 5 isn’t just a political and business mess. It highlights a significant issue that is not widely discussed: if you do not have control over the AI model you depend on, there is always a risk that your supply could be cut off at any time. You may have built entire products, automated processes and critical infrastructure based on the API of a proprietary model. Then one day, the vendor may decide to discontinue that model due to a ban, a change in business strategy, or for any other reason. You can’t run the model yourself — you don’t have the weights, the code or any means of replicating it. Your entire infrastructure goes up in smoke and you have to rebuild it from scratch. Before the ban, Anthropic was involved in a ‘secret sabotage’ scandal when they secretly limited the capabilities of Fable 5 if they detected users working in advanced AI areas — without notifying them. They later reversed the policy and apologised, but the core issue remains: you have no control over the software you depend on. Once access is only through APIs and commercial contracts, that control can be taken away.

Therefore, choosing an open-source AI model is not just a technical decision. It is a fundamental choice for the future of human intelligence infrastructure. AI is becoming vital infrastructure for work, education, science, innovation, public services and national capacity. If access to this infrastructure depends on closed APIs, remote platforms, constantly changing terms and conditions, opaque censorship and pricing dictated by a select group of companies, then we are building a subscription economy for cognition. However, if the model you use is open source and downloaded by thousands of people, no government or company can ban it. It will exist forever. DeepSeek and Qwen have proven this; despite chip bans and political pressure from the US, these models remain ubiquitous because their weights are publicly available and can be run by anyone with the necessary resources.

In a world of political and commercial instability, being self-reliant in terms of AI models is essential for survival. Institutionalisation can change overnight — an administrative order, a decree or a trade war, for example. Politicisation can turn your model into a pawn in power struggles, as demonstrated by the recent ban on Fable 5. Commercialisation can cause vendors to change the terms and conditions at any time, always prioritising their own interests over yours. Open-source AI enables you to research, modify, deploy and operate it yourself without needing anyone’s permission. It ensures that your intellectual infrastructure cannot be hijacked by a remote decision. The Fable 5 ban is a wake-up call, whether or not it is lifted. If you don’t own your AI model, you don’t own your intellectual infrastructure. You’re just renting it — and that contract can be terminated at any time.